France are the favourites but BallinEurope’s Emmet Ryan sees some interesting opportunities for value throughout EuroBasket 2015
The effective hosts, well they won’t leave their home country at any stage, for EuroBasket 2015 are a surprisingly good price right now to win it all. Given how utterly loaded France are at present, getting them at 5/2 looks a steal as it leaves room for insurance bets around Les Bleus. Rather rightly the French are utterly unbackable just to win their group, at 1/4, but as an early outright pick this is a price I find particularly tasty.
Looking at the best of the rest, Spain look a little over-priced at 7/2 and I think they will come out to 9/2 or 5/1 during the group stage. In-running betting is far from a science so if you don’t want to wait around, the best value outside of France lies with Serbia at 7/1 which works as a solid insurance bet when pair with France.
This site makes betting easy but working out value on any pick requires a little bit of work. That’s where we get to the groups where there are some flat out silly prices in the early going.
Group B in Berlin has Spain as clear favourites but they are surprisingly good value at 4/5. While it’s arguably the deepest group of the four in the competition, Serbia offer the only real threat and they will find the challenges of Turkey and Italy far tougher with match-ups. If I was pricing this I’d have Spain no longer than 4/7 so while it’s not a killer play, 4/5 is a good price at this point.
Group C is one where the second favourite offers the best value. Croatia have rightly been installed as 5/4 favourites early on but the gulf between them and Slovenia is nowhere near what the market says. Slovenia are underdogs to win this group but 5/1 is just stupid value. As fliers go, it’s probably the best on the board here. Definitely worth a serious look from all bettors.
Finally we come to Group D which could well be called the Group of Life because it’s just so shallow. Lithuania should be runaway favourites here as I don’t see any way the other contenders can stop them from taking top spot. I’m not going to be too hot on Lithuania in the knockout stages but in Riga I expect them to dominate. At 4/7 they are tremendous value as favourites. Of all the picks available, this is the one I am most confident of delivering come September.
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